Four Corners

Bad Medicine

It’s almost the perfect crime. Fake medicines kill the most vulnerable people – the old, the weak and the sick. Once consumed, the evidence is gone.

And it’s extremely lucrative – a global racket worth close to $40 billion a year, according to the World Health Organisation.

The BBC’s This World program tracks some of the networks behind this obscene but largely invisible crime. Reporter Olenka Frenkiel starts from point of sale in Third World street markets and follows the trail back to manufacturers who boast they can fake any drug and any packaging.

One faker explains how he bribes his way past authorities who know all about his activities. Another offers to make a fake TB drug which, instead of containing four types of antibiotics, will contain chalk and paracetamol.

Doctors around the world are now wrestling with new drug-resistant strains of TB. Fake drugs have played their part in the development of these strains.

The tragedy sown by drug counterfeiters is plain to see. In one case an international charity came to Nigeria to carry out heart surgery on sick children. But the children were pumped with fake adrenalin and contaminated drips. They didn’t stand a chance.